


drowning in these dreams of mine

by helplessly



Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pining, That's it that's the plot, Underage Drinking, and more underage drinking and more pining, mentions of previous Paxton/Devi, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25248712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helplessly/pseuds/helplessly
Summary: Maybe she’d had more to drink than he realized and really doesn’t remember kissing him,he reasons one night, trying to study for a chemistry test and finding himself too distracted by the thought of her.Maybe she’s waiting for him to say something about it first. Maybe she wants to talk to him about it somewhere a little more private than school. Maybe she’s afraid of doing something weird and ruining their friendship.Maybe she doesn’t want him when she’s sober.
Relationships: Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Comments: 17
Kudos: 100





	drowning in these dreams of mine

When Devi kisses him for the first time, it tastes vaguely like salt. Like her nearly dried tears and Malibu’s ocean breeze.

But it feels like fireworks exploding behind his eyes. It feels like butterflies dancing in his stomach. It feels like time freezing around them. It feels like every stupid cliché he’s ever scoffed at in books. Perhaps most cliché of all, it feels like new beginnings. 

He’s thinking of new beginnings when he drives straight to Shira’s house after, when he tells her that he’s so sorry, but he can’t be with her anymore. When she pouts for only a second before she grins and begs him to film a breakup TikTok with her. 

He’s thinking of new beginnings when he lies in his bed that night and touches his fingers to his lips, mindful of giving Devi the time with her family that she needs but feeling desperate to see her again.

He’s thinking of new beginnings when he waits for her by his locker the next morning, his lips spread in a goofy grin and his heart beating hard in his chest.

But when Devi walks into the school, it’s with her hand held in Paxton’s. And it becomes very clear to Ben that her new beginning won’t be with him.

###### 

Devi and Paxton date for the rest of the school year. 

Ben tries to ignore them when they kiss in the hallways. It’s harder to ignore them fight. 

Some days, he looks at Devi and it’s like she’s happier than she’s ever been. She hangs off of Paxton’s arm while they walk to class. She laughs with him and his friends from the middle of the hot pocket. She races him to his jeep when the bell rings at the end of the day. She grins, smiling with all her teeth, in the pictures of them that she posts to her Instagram.

But most days, Ben can see through it. He knows that when she chose Paxton, she didn’t just choose him over Ben. She chose him over her friends, who look lost and so unlike themselves without her. And from the way that she arrives and leaves school every day in Paxton’s jeep, he assumes that she chose him over her family too. Whatever peace she had made with them must have fallen apart shortly after she reconnected with Paxton. He sees the way that it hurts her in the longing glances that she sends toward her friends when she thinks no one’s looking, in the lonely expression she wears when she zones out in class and he has to nudge her to alert her to the teacher’s question. 

It happens more often as the months pass, and her fights with Paxton become more frequent and more visible, until eventually she’s slamming open her locker door with tears in her eyes nearly every morning. Ben turns to her every time, asks if she’s okay, if there’s anything he can do, but she just smiles tightly and says she’s fine, thanking him as she heads to class.

Their relationship eventually implodes right in Ben’s living room.

He’s hosting a party for the end of the school year – well, he supposes it’s more like Trent who’s hosting it. It’s just occurring at his house. The whole thing was Trent’s idea and he really didn’t feel that he’d be in the mood to party, but there seemed to be an odd friendship developing between them and he didn’t want to ruin it by being a buzzkill. 

But he figures maybe being a poser is worse because now he’s living in some kind of nightmare, clutching a cup of punch that he hopes Trent didn’t put his balls in and watching with half of his grade as Devi and Paxton scream at each other. He tries to tune it out, but they don’t seem to care that everybody’s stopped to listen. He’s about to step in, to tuck Devi behind his back and ask Paxton to leave, to do something, when Devi suddenly seems to deflate, says that she can’t do this anymore and disappears down the hall. 

He hesitates for a few minutes before it becomes clear that Paxton isn’t going to go after her and then he follows down the hall in search of her. 

When he finds her, she’s sitting in the front row of the screening room. Worried that she’ll scare like a deer if he approaches too quickly, he slowly settles into the seat next to her, trying not to think of the last time they were in these seats. How pretty she looked in that dress. How sweet her smile was when she gave him the chocolates. How desperate he was to know if her lips were as soft as they looked.

“Are you okay?”

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look at him. But she tilts her head back against the cushion of the seat, and he can see the tears on her cheeks in the dim light, and he supposes that answers the question well enough.

His heart aches. He wants so badly to brush away her tears with his thumb or to pull her into his arms, but he wants to help and he’s not sure that she would accept either of those things if she won’t even talk to him. So, he just sits with her, eyes trained on her as she breathes heavily beside him.

“This is where you tried to kiss me,” she says suddenly, gaze still raised to the ceiling, and it’s so unexpected that it’s his turn to be silent for a long moment, lost for words in the way that only she can leave him. 

“Twice,” he adds when he’s found his voice, lowering his gaze to the floor as he lets out a breathy, self-deprecating laugh. 

She doesn’t laugh, just says softly, “Why did you try to kiss me that night?”

He hesitates again. They barely talked about the attempted kisses after she moved in with him and haven’t even acknowledged the actual kiss that they shared in the months that have passed. The way she mentions it so suddenly now makes his heart leap into his throat. 

It would be easy enough to lie again. Blame it on Trent’s punch, as he had that night. Maybe she didn’t buy the story then and maybe she wouldn’t buy it now, but he doubts she’d call him out on it. Then again, she’s surprised him twice already. So, he settles for the truth, speaking to his hands. “I liked you. For a long time, I think.”

When he glances back up at her, she’s looking at him curiously. Her head’s tilted just slightly to the side and it makes a piece of hair fall into her eyes. He longs to tuck it behind her ear. “Liked?” she repeats.

Her eyes are still shining with tears and he has to look away. She must know. She has to know that he still aches for her, that he still thinks about how her lips felt slanted over his, that he still wonders if she’d be happier if she had decided to be with him over Paxton. There’s no way that she can believe that his feelings for her could ever exist in the past tense. 

He doesn’t want to lie, but he’s scared to tell the truth, so he stays silent, and then she’s speaking again.

“Maybe…” she starts softly, and he’s still not looking at her, but he can _feel_ her inching closer to him, “Maybe you could try again.”

His heart starts to race in his chest and he’s certain for a moment that he’s just imagined her saying that. Trent’s grandma punch has obviously just kicked in and he’s lost his mind. But when he glances at her, she’s looking at him like she’s waiting. But even if she did say it, she couldn’t have meant it, right? He thinks of her pulling away from him _twice_ in this very spot, thinks of her kissing him and then showing up to school in Paxton’s jeep, and thinks that she couldn’t possibly have meant it.

He must think for too long because then she’s closing the distance herself, pressing her lips against his.

The first thought he has is that her lips taste like tears again, and he wonders if she’ll ever kiss him when she hasn’t just been crying.

She kisses him slowly, sadly, like she’s saying goodbye or maybe _I’m sorry_. He kisses her back hesitantly, gently, lifting a shaking hand to brush through her hair. It’s bittersweet and only makes his heart ache more. 

After a moment, she pulls away. Looks at him with sad eyes and a watery smile. Tells him that she has to go and leaves. 

And he’s left staring after her, lost for words again.

###### 

Ben doesn’t see her again for months after their kiss.

A few weeks after the party, he learns from her Instagram that she’s spending the summer in India. She posts videos of her teasing her young cousins to her story and he watches them a few more times than he should, revelling in how full her laugh sounds, how genuine and beautiful her smile is when she flips the camera back to her. He can’t help smiling back at the video. She looks happy and he can only assume that this means she’s reconnected with her mother.

He hasn’t texted her since the party, uncertain about the fragile thing that existed between them and scared to break it. But he opens the camera on his phone without thinking about it, snaps a photo of the meat lover’s omelette on his plate and sends it to her with a little drooling emoji.

His phone vibrates immediately.

 _I know where you live,_ she says simply.

His phone vibrates in his hand again and he grins when he sees the meme she’s sent, a picture of a stuffed Kirby holding a giant knife. 

They fall into their easy banter like nothing’s happened, and he’s content to pretend if it means that they’ll still get to be friends. 

When the end of the summer nears, he finds himself at a beach party. He wouldn’t typically be invited to this kind of thing anymore, given the loss of whatever popularity he had when he was dating Shira. But Trent, whom he’s actually become good friends with now, is constantly invited to parties and he suggests they go instead of spending the evening watching Rick and Morty and playing Super Smash Bros as they often did. 

He decides he needs to listen to Trent’s suggestions more often when he spots Devi across the bonfire that lights up the beach, nursing a wine cooler and looking nervous as she chats with Fabiola and Eleanor. She glances over suddenly, and his eyes widen, realizing he’s been caught staring. But she just smiles shyly and nods at him, turning her attention back to her friends. 

There’s a part of him that’s impatient, that feels too powerfully the pull toward her, that wants to talk to her now and preferably for the whole night because he missed her desperately and they need to talk. But he can’t remember the last time he saw her with her friends, and he knows the conversation they’re having must be important. So, he waits, shotgunning a beer with Trent and regretting it immediately, burning every marshmallow he tries to roast, glancing at her often to make sure she’s still around.

When he glances up and she’s no longer standing with her friends, he feels his heart sink, thinking he’s missed his chance to talk with her. But he spots a figure standing by the water, and though he can only see her silhouette, he knows it’s her. As he grows closer, he realizes she’s standing with her feet in, the tide reaching as high as her ankles before it pulls back. He slips off his sandals and joins her.

“How’s your summer?” he says when he’s next to her, wishing he had something better to say. He’s had months to think about it after all.

Her answering smile is as bright as the moon that hangs above them. “Good,” she says, nodding and looking like she means it, “Really good.”

She tells him about India, about how she’s talking with her mom again, about how Fabiola and Eleanor have forgiven her. He tells her about how he spent a lot of the summer working under his dad, about how grateful he feels that he gets to spend more time with him, about the unlikely friendship that’s formed between him and Trent. The last point gets a few laughs from her, high and ringing and so _healing_ to the piece of him that’s longed for her all summer, so he shares a lot of stories about him. 

They talk until the party behind them has died down significantly, until there’s nothing left to talk about, and then they stand in a comfortable silence, sipping from their drinks and staring at the moon.

“Ben?” she eventually says, softer than the sand beneath him.

He turns to her, heart beating a little harder in his chest, remembering the last time she used that voice on him. _Maybe you could try again,_ she said that night, and he wonders now, as he has over and over again in the months without her, if she really meant _maybe we could try again._

“Yeah?” he breathes, thoughts racing through his mind about what she might want to say to him.

“Thank you.”

It pulls him up short.

“I- for what?” he says, scanning her face for some sort of clue.

She hesitates for a while and then turns her gaze to her toes. “You’re the only one that I knew would always be there,” she pauses and then adds in a smaller voice, “No matter what I did to you.”

His eyes wander to the wine cooler in her hand and he wonders how much of an influence the drink is having on her words. He’s had several drinks himself now, and he’s not sure why she’s saying this, even less sure about how to respond, so he falls back on teasing her and forces a weak laugh, “Well, I don’t think anything you do to me now could be as bad as when you sabotaged my sixth-grade science project.”

He catches her smile, but she doesn’t say anything, so he tries again.

“You don’t have to thank me for that, Devi,” he says, reaching to rub the back of his neck bashfully. It should be a given that he would always be there for her. He yearns for her in a way that overwhelms him, but above that, he cares for her. He continues uncertainly, “It’s not like… well. There wasn’t ever really a choice, I guess.” 

She looks at him for just a second, searching his gaze, before she surprises him again and steps forward to press her lips to his.

It feels more like their first kiss than their last one. With his eyes closed and her hand clutching his jaw, he can almost pretend their back in his car and kissing like nothing else mattered. She tastes like cherry wine this time, though, and he chases the sweetness of her lips, runs the tip of his tongue along her lower one until she opens her mouth to him and sighs and the sound is even sweeter. After months spent missing her and even longer spent wanting her, he can’t pull her close enough, though he tries, pressing his free hand to her lower back. 

When she pulls away, he suddenly feels drunker than he did before, the world seeming to spin around him. His heart is pounding, and he can’t seem to catch his breath, and his vision has tunneled so that he sees only her.

She bites her lip shyly, and he’s struck by the thought of her sinking her teeth into his own lower lip and he wants so badly to kiss her again, but Eleanor’s calling for her and something seems to shift in her, her eyes widening, and she tells him she’ll see him at school and hurries back up the beach.

He tastes cherry wine on his lips all night. 

###### 

He does see her at school, in nearly all of his classes, and it almost makes up for having to miss her for those months.

His stomach’s in knots the entire first day of school, wondering when she’ll talk to him about the kiss, hoping that more will follow. He holds his breath every time she turns to him, but while she jokes with him and smiles at him in that way that makes him warm, she doesn’t mention the kiss. Doesn’t mention that night at the beach at all, really. If the taste of cherry wine hadn’t plagued his dreams every night since, he might’ve been convinced he imagined the whole thing.

There are moments when he thinks about saying something, when they’re alone by their lockers or lingering in the classroom after everyone else has left. He almost convinces himself to ask her what the kiss meant, if it meant anything at all. But then he remembers that hollow feeling that came with seeing her with Paxton after their kiss in Malibu and says nothing. 

He’s confused and honestly a little hurt, but he pushes the feelings down, and lets himself enjoy her presence and pretend that the sound of her laughter doesn’t make his heart swell. 

It only gets more confusing a few weeks later.

He’s headed to another party, this time at Trent’s house. There’s not really any purpose for it, but Ben’s grateful for the distraction from the thoughts of Devi that keep him up at night. When he knocks on the door, he expects his new friend to invite him in.

But it’s Devi who swings the door open. She’s swaying slightly in a pretty dress and her eyes are bright and unfocused and he knows she’s tipsy already.

“Ben!” she grins when her gaze lands on his face. He feels his chest warm at the genuine happiness in her voice as she says his name and he opens his mouth to greet her, but he’s quickly silenced by her lips against his.

Her lips are hot as they slant over his and she tastes like cinnamon whiskey. Her arms loop around his neck and the movement is so fluid, it feels natural, like this is how they always greet each other. But he’s frozen in surprise beneath her touch, his hands hovering uncertainly over her waist. It’s over in a moment, but it’s enough to make his heart race fast enough that he thinks he might just go into cardiac arrest right there in Trent’s doorway. 

She smiles when she pulls away and maybe he’s already dead, actually, because he’s convinced that she’s an angel.

“Come on,” she says, taking his hand and pulling him into the house, and he hopes that she can’t feel the moisture on his palm, “You have to play beer pong with me. Fabiola’s fucking OP and I need you to help me beat her and Eve.”

Fabiola smiles at him when they reach the table where her and Eve are waiting, but she raises her eyebrows when her gaze lowers to their joined hands. Ben spends the rest of the night trying to make some sense of the girl holding his hand and pretending not to notice the quizzical looks of her friends. 

###### 

He’s not as surprised this time when Devi continues to act like nothing happened.

 _Maybe she’d had more to drink than he realized and really doesn’t remember kissing him,_ he reasons one night, trying to study for a chemistry test and finding himself too distracted by the thought of her. _Maybe she’s waiting for him to say something about it first. Maybe she wants to talk to him about it somewhere a little more private than school. Maybe she’s afraid of doing something weird and ruining their friendship._

__

__

_Maybe she doesn’t want him when she’s sober._

He tries to push that thought away and pulls out his phone, hesitates for a moment before deciding to text her. 

He’s already too distracted by the thought of her to study properly now, he figures it can’t be much worse with her here. And it’s not like he can really ask anyone else. She’s the only one that can keep up with him. He hates studying with other people, hates how he ends up wasting his time explaining the most basic concepts to them over and over. And if he decides not to text her and it’s because of what happened between them, wouldn’t he be the one making it weird? He doesn’t want that.

And, a small part of him adds, maybe she’ll say something about the kisses if they’re alone together. 

_You wanna come over and study?_

_It’s Friday night, Gross,_ she says, but it only takes her a moment to reply, so he knows she’s not doing anything exciting. He smiles.

 _Which means you’re busy watching Riverdale alone?_

_...Stfu._

She’s in his living room 15 minutes later, lying on her stomach on the couch, quizzing him from the study sheet he prepared. He sits in the chair opposite her and smiles fondly at how comfortable she makes herself in his home. He’s missed having her here, hearing her laugh ring through the hallways, finding strands of her long hair all over the place, being in her presence all the time. Sure, his home’s always felt kind of empty, but it’s felt even emptier since she left. 

“This is boring,” she eventually groans, letting her head fall against the cushion.

“I actually think organic chemistry is pretty interesting,” he replies, not looking up from his textbook, “Did you know-”

“No, I mean _this-_ ” she gestures vaguely to the two of them and the pile of books on the table, “This is boring. I don’t wanna study anymore. The test is still, like, a week away, anyway.” 

He clicks his tongue disapprovingly, shaking his head, “If you want to give up on your Princeton dreams that easily, it’s your choice. I’ve got a future to worry about. It’s getting harder every year to get into an Ivy League school, y’know. Maybe they’ll have room for you at Cornell.”

She rolls her eyes and stands, stretching her arms above her head, and Ben has to tear his eyes away from the sliver of skin that the movement exposes at her waist as her shirt rises slightly. She sends him an innocent smile as she leaves the room, saying simply, “I have an idea.”

When she returns, she’s smiling in a way that’s decidedly less innocent and holding a bottle of vodka that he assumes she’s nicked from his parents’ bar. “If we’re going to study on a Friday night,” she says, “We should at least have some fun.”

He thinks of the wine cooler in her hand on the beach and the taste of cinnamon whiskey on her lips at Trent’s house. He thinks of her unfocused eyes and her loose grin and her sudden desire for him, and he can’t stop his earlier thought from resurfacing. _Maybe she doesn’t want him when she’s sober._

He’s opening his mouth to tell her it’s a bad idea, to make up some lie about how he has plans in the morning or about how his parents will notice the missing bottle, but she’s already twisting the cap off and lifting the bottle to her lips. 

They decide they’ll drink when they get a question wrong, which is reassuring to Ben because neither of them really struggle with chemistry. The problem that he doesn’t realize is how strong the vodka is, how likely it becomes to get another question wrong once you’ve missed one and taken a drink.

He doesn’t realize how much it’s affecting him until Devi accidentally tips the bottle over on the table in front of her and he rushes to upright it before it spills. The sudden movement leaves him feeling unbalanced, like he’s standing in one of those rotating tunnels at a funhouse, and he sinks down onto the couch next to where she sits, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

“Sorry,” she says, letting out a breathy laugh beside him.

“S’okay. Think that’s enough vodka for now, anyway,” he turns to her and his laugh dies in his throat when he realizes how close she is. He can feel the warmth of her where she’s pressed against his side, can feel her breath on his lips when it leaves hers. 

He’s expecting it when she kisses him this time, but it’s still completely overwhelming.

It’s more desperate than before. She kisses him in the kind of way that feels bruising, pressing closer and closer to him until she’s in his lap, hands gripping fistfuls of his shirt. For a moment, he loses himself in it. He tangles one hand in her hair and moves the other to her lower back, pushing his hand just under the hem of her shirt, running his fingers along the soft skin that her stretch had exposed earlier. His fingertips burn where they make contact with her skin and he knows he’s playing with fire. 

But she tastes like the vodka on the table, and he can’t keep the thought from bouncing around his head until it hurts. _Maybe she doesn’t want him when she’s sober._

She pulls away to kiss down his neck and he takes the opportunity to breathe, “Devi…”

“Ben,” she sighs, pressing her lips to his again, and his resolve almost crumbles because it’s the sweetest sound he’s ever heard and she’s so warm in his arms and-

“Devi, I can’t,” he manages to murmur when he pulls away again, “If… If you just want a drunken hookup, I can’t- I can’t be that for you, Devi.”

“That’s not-” she starts, stopping herself as her brows furrow. She pauses for a long moment, looking uncertain, and then she’s climbing off of him, saying softly, “I think I should go.”

 _Shit._ His heart sinks. He’s messed it up. He should’ve said something when she brought out the vodka. Hell, he should’ve said something after Trent’s party. He’s left it too long and he’s hurt her now and he’s such an idiot.

His distress must show on his face, because she reassures him, her voice firm, “It’s okay. Really. I’m not upset. I just- I can’t think straight and I don’t want to have this conversation like this.”

He’s not sure what conversation she means, but there’s a sense of calm in her voice that reassures him. Devi, with her impossibly short fuse, isn’t exactly the type of person who can convincingly pretend to not be upset.

“I’m going to call a Lyft,” she says, pulling out her phone, “I’ll talk to you later?”

He nods, not trusting his voice, and she sends him a final reassuring smile and disappears down the hallway.

###### 

When he wakes the next morning, it’s to a brilliant hangover-induced headache and the sound of someone ringing his doorbell repeatedly. _Obnoxiously,_ he corrects in his head as he pulls himself from his bed, letting out a loud groan. His house is unnecessarily large so the walk to the door from his room is quite a distance, but the doorbell never relents, only making his head hurt more as he nears.

He swings the door open, prepared to grumble about the doorbell and the unexpected visit, when he realizes it’s her, looking as radiant as the sun behind her, despite the fact that she seemed to have even more to drink than he did last night. He thinks of how he must look - exhausted and unshowered, grimacing in the morning light – and decides life isn’t fair.

Still, it feels like his head hurts a little less at the sight of her.

“Devi,” he says, surprised. Despite her reassurances, he felt like shit after she left the night before, worried that she was just pretending to be calm for an easy escape so she could avoid him forever afterward. But maybe if she’s here, it means he hasn’t ruined everything, means there’s still a chance for them to be friends or something more-

“I forgot my textbook,” she says, an uncomfortable smile pulling at her lips.

“Oh,” he says, his hope dying in his chest.

She looks down at her feet uncertainly, and he starts to panic and _oh god, this is so uncomfortable, he’s fucked this up so bad,_ but she continues in a small voice, “And I was kind of hoping to talk to you about something, if you have time.”

He had repeated her words in his head over and over after she left last night, trying to understand what kind of conversation she was referring to when she said she didn’t want to have “this conversation” right then. She must want to have it now then, he realizes. There’s a part of him that’s hopeful, that thinks maybe this conversation will consist of all of the things he’s dreamed of her saying for months. _I want you, I need you, I choose you._ But the larger part of him is more pessimistic, and perhaps more realistic, and knows that if she wanted to say those things to him, than she would have after their kiss in Malibu.

Heart sinking in his chest, he struggles to swallow and says, “Okay.”

She follows him into the living room, deposits her textbook in her bag, and sits down on the couch. He sits next to her, trying not to think about how they had been sitting like this last night before she kissed him, before she pulled him close, before she crawled into his lap and sighed his name.

“So,” she says, breaking the silence and bringing him back to reality. It’s not like he’ll ever experience those things again. He drops his gaze, takes a deep breath, and waits for the blow, but she just says, “I like you, Gross.”

His head snaps up to look at her, expecting a cruel smirk to signify that she’s playing with his feelings. But she’s just smiling shyly at him, and he feels something lift in his chest.

“I like you a lot, actually,” she continues, fiddling with her sleeves nervously, “And I want to be with you. I do. But I’m finally starting to feel okay again. After- well, after everything. And I know it sounds so stupid and it really fucking is stupid, but last year, I guess I thought that Paxton could fix me. And it took me a long time to realize that I need to do that. And I’m getting better, but I don’t think I can be in a relationship right now.”

He’s still not used to Devi being as open with him as she is sometimes these days, and he takes a long moment to process what she’s said.

He must take too long because she continues, “And I’m sorry for kissing you last night. And the other times. It’s just hard to- to not kiss you sometimes. But I know that it’s not fair to you to kiss you when I’m not ready to commit to you.”

He almost laughs, full of an elated sort of disbelief. Devi likes him. Devi wants to be with him. Devi thinks it’s hard to not kiss him. He’s been thinking so negatively about it, convincing himself that she didn’t want him at all, that she was just tipsy and he just happened to be around and that was all there was to it. But she wants him, just like he wants her.

“I get it,” he says eventually, when he’s had the time to absorb the information and slow his pounding heart, “I like you a lot too, David. And I care about you very much. However long you need, I’ll be here.”

Her answering smile is blinding and he can’t help himself from smiling back at her. His feelings for her haven’t changed in all of the months since their first kiss, he’s confident he can wait longer. Especially since he knows now that the feelings are reciprocated, that someday the waiting will end and he’ll be able to pull her into his arms.

“As for the kissing, you don’t have to apologize about that. I guess I just misunderstood why you wanted to kiss me,” he says and then sends her a smirk, “Should’ve known that it was because you’re obsessed with me.”

She smacks his arm, but she’s laughing, “You’re the one who’s always following me around and staring at me at all those parties.”

“You’re the one throwing yourself at me constantly. _‘Sorry,’_ ” he says in a breathy interpretation of her before she kissed him last night, looking at her from under his eyelashes in an exaggeratedly seductive way.

“Shut up, Ben!” she says, opening her mouth to reply when her phone chimes. She pulls it out and then gives him a sad smile. “I’ve gotta get going. I told my mom I’d only be a bit and we’re trying this whole honesty thing out, so. I’ll talk to you later?”

He nods, lips spreading in a smile. This is the first time in a long time that he hasn’t felt doubtful that he would ever talk to her again. The smile doesn’t fade from his face as she rises from the couch, collects her bag, hesitates for a moment, bends down to press the softest kiss to his cheek, and disappears down the hall again.

###### 

She doesn’t kiss him when she’s drunk after that.

She does, however, kiss him when she’s sober.

The first time it happens, they’re at her house, and her mom’s at work and Kamala’s out with Prashant. They’re meant to be studying for a history test, but they’ve gotten a little sidetracked and he’s talking animatedly about Andy Samberg’s early filmography after learning that she likes to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine when she presses her lips to his.

It’s just for a moment before she pulls away, apologizing, “Sorry, I know I said I wouldn’t, you’re just… cute.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind, really,” he assures her with a smile that he’s certain is dopey and dazed, “And anyway, I know how impossible it is to resist me.”

She shoves him and turns back to her studies, but the kisses slowly become more frequent in the months after that.

She kisses him hello sometimes and then kisses him goodbye. Kisses him to shut him up. Kisses him to watch him blush. Kisses him because she’s happy. Kisses him because she’s bored. Kisses him at his house. Kisses him at school. Kisses him on his lips and on his cheeks and down his neck. Kisses him and says that it’s for no reason at all. 

She kisses him quite a lot these days, and he savours every single one, but he never kisses her first.

“Why don’t you ever kiss me? I always kiss you first.”

They’re sitting on his couch when she asks him, playing Super Smash Brothers on his Switch. She barely plays the game and exclusively plays as Kirby, but she almost always manages to beat him regardless. He executes a flawless combo against her, sending her character flying off the stage, and he grins before he considers her question.

“I guess I just don’t want to take things from you that you’re not ready to give me. I can wait,” he says casually, attacking her character when it spawns on the stage again. He glances at her when he realizes that her Kirby isn’t resisting the attacks and starts to rethink his response when he notices she’s lowered her controller and turned her gaze to him. Uncertain, he adds, “Sorry if that doesn’t make any sense.”

She stares at him in silence for a moment longer and he starts to panic, wondering if he’s said something wrong.

“I’m ready. I want to be with you. God, I’ve wanted to be with you for so long. I’m ready,” she says finally, and his controller slips from his hands to crash on the floor, but he can’t take his eyes off of her, feeling his heart soar in his chest, “Kiss me, please.”

And he doesn’t need to be told twice.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope this isn't as much of a mess as i feel like it is lmao. hope you enjoyed it!!!! c:


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